SciFi Art Now is a book collecting some of the best in contemporary science fiction art by a wide range of creators. The book, edited by John Freeman, includes an introduction by the legendary Chris Foss and is on sale now in all good bookshops.

Wednesday, 6 October 2010

Emma Alvarez is a digital artist who started working in the Internet in year 1998. In addition to illustration, she's made lots of different things from shirt designs to concept artist of virtual worlds. Lately, she has also worked as texture artist for 3D models. Although she's not a 3D modeler, she's been close to the art from from the beginning, because she works with her husband who is a modeler, and she says the 3D world "amazes me". (She mixes 3D and 2D in her work).

Emma's art has allowed her to exhibit across the globe, in places such as Hong Kong, twice in Morocco, in some cities of Spain, and recently, back in August she had an exhibition in Barcelona

"That was especially important for me," she says, "as one of my artworks was near the paintings of one of my favorite painters, Salvador Dali."

SciFi Art Now: What tools do you mainly use to create your art?

Emma Alvarez: I love mixing, using many applications together. Sometimes I mix fractal art. For that I use Apophysis. Other times I use vector art, and use Freehand and Illustrator. For 3D I use DAZ Studio and Poser, but always end using Photoshop. For me Photoshop was love at first sight. I love creating brushes to make my works, experimenting...

Some months ago I made some animal fur brushes that took me three months to make them, but I'm very happy with the result. And I love digital painting with Photoshop.

Going to Mars by Emma Alvarez

SciFi Art Now: Why?

Emma: I never was a classical artist. You will never see me with a charcoal. But leave me alone with my PC and my Wacom, and things change. I can't tell you why, but there's a special relationship between Photoshop and me. As I said to you, love at fist sight.

SciFi Art Now: What inspired you to become an artist?

Emma: Since I was a child I wanted to be an artist. But sometimes I was lost and made very different things. I have the need to transmit what I think and feel. And art allows me to do that.

SciFi Art Now: What was the most useful piece of advice you were given when you began learning your craft?

Emma: I wish someone had given me one, LOL! In the beginning, I sometimes felt like inside a tunnel in which I can't see the light. Although I'm graphics designer, that didn't help me too much. I am mostly self-taught.

SciFi Art Now: What is the appeal to you of science fiction as an inspiration for some of your work?

Emma: I've liked science fiction since I was a child. I think about science fiction writers as visionaries of the future, that often imagine and write stories about things that science finally ends achieving. That imagination and freedom of expression is what attracts me to science fiction.

SciFi Art Now: Do you have a favourite piece of work or project you have worked on?

Emma: All of them are like my babies, I couldn't choose one. The others may be jealous, LOL!

SciFi Art Now: In your career, have you had any bizarre experiences while creating your art?

Emma: I sometimes have deja vu. And when I finish an artwork I feel like I had done it before. It is strange and fascinating.

SciFi Art Now: What most frustrates you about being an artist?

Emma: You ask me this today, after I had to send a copyright complaint to a mobile site that used one of my works without authorization. That [sort of copyright theft] frustrates me very much.

Emma: When I'm front of a computer working in one of my illustrations, I'm the most happy person in the world. For me, making illustrations is like something mystical. I won't change that for anything.

SciFi Art Now: What advice would you offer to anyone starting out as an artist?

Emma: I would say "Look for work from 9 to 5". But if he/she still wants to be an artist, I would say "If that is the first of your thoughts when you awake in the morning and the last one when you go to sleep at night, go ahead, keep on".

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About Sci-Fi Art Now

Sci-Fi Art Now is a book collecting some of the best in contemporary science fiction art by a wide range of creators. The book, edited by John Freeman, includes an introduction by the legendary Chris Foss, published in the UK by ILEX and in the US by Harper Collins.

A full list of artists featured, together with links to their web sites, appears below.

Chris Foss

Chris Foss provides the introduction for Sci-Fi Art Now, an artist who has had an immense impact on our collective vision of the future down the years, as cover artist for many SF books written by authors such as Harry Harrison, Philip K Dick, Isaac Asimov and E.E. 'Doc' Smith'; and his design work for films such as Alien and Superman.